Full Coverage: Emergency relief

28.02.2006 On-the-spot reports on Kenya's drought by members of AMREF's communications team, Arik Karani and Christine Misiko.

24.02.2006 Kenya is facing a disaster of "immense proportions" because of unprecedented drought and the Africa-wide collapse of small-scale and household farming, a development group warned yesterday.
* UN envoy urges global community to explore root causes of hunger

23.02.2006 KABUL, 4 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - Most of rural Afghanistan continues to suffer from food insecurity and a lack of government input. In an exclusive interview with IRIN, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Afghan Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, said that despite billions of dollars worth of reconstruction over three years, rural areas continue to face huge challenges.

23.02.2006 Firm commitments from rich countries to fund the response to the food crisis in East Africa are not being made quickly enough, a leading international aid agency said today.

23.02.2006 ISLAMABAD: Academy award winner Sir Ben Kingsley said that the devastating earthquake in Pakistan has infused a new spirit of selflessness and courage among the people. He said that he could not forget the pitiless devastation juxtaposed with hope. “When you see a woman crying because she can’t find her child under four million tonnes of rubble, that’s humanity,” he said on his return from filming a documentary in quake-hit areas of Pakistan.

22.02.2006 Save the Children is working to assist children and families in the central Philippines following a huge mudslide that killed hundreds of people in the village of Guinsaugon.

22.02.2006 Search and rescue operations in The Philippines in the wake of the mudslide give way to helping those displaced by the heavy rains in southern Leyte.

20.02.2006 People living in the foothills of Mt Mayapay, southern Philippines, earlier this month expressed concern that their denuded mountain could be the source of a mudslide which would destroy them. Now, in another part of that country a similar deforested mountain has collapsed causing a massive mudslide that has buried a village and killed some 1700 people, including many children.

17.02.2006 Hundreds of thousands of Somalis are at risk of dying from dehydration as people exist on a twentieth of the minimum water ration, says leading aid agency.

15.02.2006 A new fund at the United Nations is expected to enable rapid responses to sudden disasters as well as divert life-saving aid to lesser-known or forgotten crises.

14.02.2006 The detention of Christian missionaries, who were allegedly trying to convert earthquake-affected people of Uri Tehsil in Jammu and Kashmir under the garb of providing relief, has once again brought to light the role of missionaries in the state under scanner. The missionaries, claiming to be members of the Bible Society of India, had to shut their shop in quake-hit areas of Uri following complaints from locals that they were luring people to Christianity by offering monetary incentives, official sources said here.

13.02.2006 A fictional fundraiser in an upcoming episode of ABC’s soap opera "All My Children" is blurring the lines between fantasy and reality to benefit American Red Cross disaster relief efforts. The episode will include a Mardi Gras themed gala during which Susan Lucci's character will urge guests, and viewers at home, to call and donate to Red Cross efforts in the Gulf Coast and elsewhere.

13.02.2006 Hundreds of thousands of children’s lives are threatened by drought in east and central Africa. Since the failure of rains in the region in November 2005, more than 3.5 million people in Kenya alone - including half a million children - have faced dwindling supplies of food and water.

08.02.2006 Poverty and strict religious codes prevented many girls from receiving an education in Pakistan, but post-earthquake life has created new opportunities. The region hardest hit by last October's earthquake is also one of the most conservative, and with thousands now living in relief camps the barriers of poverty, gender segregation, and religion are giving way to positive changes.

08.02.2006 Failure to quickly fund the Kenyan aid effort could lead to large-scale loss of life and the worst humanitarian crisis since Kenya gained independence in 1963, Oxfam International has warned.

08.02.2006 Many children who survived the South Asian earthquake have reportedly been forced into work - often in difficult and dangerous circumstances.

08.02.2006 Save the Children says it is moving quickly to assist families left homeless by recent floods in rugged, mountainous areas of Bolivia where the agency has worked for 20 years.

08.02.2006 The food crisis in Kenya is causing not only widespread starvation and malnutrition, but also large-scale communal violence in the region. The UN and other aid agencies are devising a statement, to be released Wednesday, that will encourage increased aid to the region to help bring food to the area and halt fighting before it becomes too severe to be stopped.

06.02.2006 UNIFEM, the United Nation's arm for the women development recently entered into a partnership with Damrivi Foundation in Organisation for social economic and spiritual development through Buddhist insights in order to address the specific women's needs battered by tsunami.

06.02.2006 The United Nations has said it will be forced to ground helicopters ferrying vital supplies to the survivors of the South Asian earthquake unless it gets the $100m it needs to keep them airborne.